“It’s my money,” says Kemptville resident Cathie Adeney, who believes Scotiabank should not have withheld funds from a Registered Education Savings Plan for more than two months because of her refusal to answer questions regarding her net worth and salary.

“I was floored … I couldn’t believe it. I walked out of that bank without my money,” says Adeney.

Driving home that day last May, she wondered what she would tell her son, Jackson, who begins classes at Conestoga College in Kitchener next week and needed at least some of the funds to cover deposits and other expenses. Adeney ended up giving him money from her own pocket. “I told the bank: You’re creating a financial hardship.”

Adeney says the Scotiabank branch in Kemptville did not give her a good reason as to why it wanted or needed the information in the first place. “It’s not that I can’t (provide the information), but I don’t see why I have to,” says the information technology worker.

Was the information sought for marketing purposes, as Adeney suspects, or was it a legal requirement, as Scotiabank and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada, a self-regulatory body for mutual fund dealers such as banks, maintain?

Under revised MFDA policy, client information is collected when a mutual fund account for an RESP or Registered Retirement Savings Plan is opened. A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment program using a pool of money collected from many investors for the purpose of entrusting in securities such as stocks and bonds.

The Ontario Securities Commission would say only that the bank might have been seeking income and net worth data “to update the client profile for other investment accounts.” It did not indicate whether it was a legal requirement.

If it is a legal requirement, then why, asks Adeney, was she eventually asked by the bank in May to “make up” the numbers as “accuracy wasn’t important.” Adeney says there was no way she was going to provide false numbers, and why would a financial institution want those anyway?

Adeney says the bank worker she dealt with first and then the manager explained the money would not be released as the information requirement is programmed into the bank’s computer system. Adeney says she was told she was the first customer to challenge such a request.

“I said: ‘Show me where it says contractually I have to answer these questions to get my money … I asked if there were any tax implications — like is there something I’m missing here?’

“They said: ‘This is the way it is.’ “

After leaving the bank empty-handed, she pursued the matter with Scotiabank’s head office in Toronto.

The bank looked into her complaint and replied that “it is a regulatory requirement that a customer’s (Scotia Investment Selector or SIS) questionnaire contains up-to-date information, and our system is programmed to meet this requirement.”

The bank gave her three options to redeem the RESP: Provide updated figures and sign her SIS; provide updated figures without a signature; or authorize the bank branch to update the document “with the most conservative responses.” The bank would note the updated information did not come from Adeney.

Adeney says she agreed last month to the third option because her son needed the money. But she asked Scotiabank’s ombudsman to investigate.

Adeney says she doesn’t want something “made up or on my file” about her finances that could end up haunting her. “They’re just being a bully. It’s my money and they didn’t give it to me for two months. Even then, I had to acquiesce to one of their ideas.”

Generally, says Ian Strulovitch, spokesman for the mutual fund dealers group, “all MFDA members have an obligation to ensure that trading in a client account is suitable for the client’s investment objectives, risk tolerance and other personal circumstances.”

But after more queries from the Public Citizen, Scotiabank spokesman Andrew Chornenky says the information requested from Adeney was never required.

“Based on the followup questions that you had … we did some more digging and just found out that what she had in her RESP account was cash” — not mutual funds. So the MFDA and securities rules did not apply when she tried to redeem the RESP.

“We’d like to apologize to Ms. Adeney for insisting she provide Scotiabank with information that wasn’t necessary for the transaction she was attempting to complete. We are using this as a learning opportunity regarding requirements around the withdrawal of cash from certain types of accounts and around closing accounts.”

Adeney now wants assurances that the estimates the bank came up with for her annual salary and net worth will be wiped from its computers. Replies Chornenky: “I can confirm any financial information was cleared from the system.”

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